Thursday, July 24, 2014

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Santa Barbara County’s unemployment rate in June (5.4 percent) jumped slightly from May (5 percent) but showed a positive trend from June 2013 (6.8 percent), according to the county’s Workforce Investment Board. The jobless numbers put the county in a better position than the state (7.3 percent) and the country (6.3 percent), bringing the county’s total workforce to 212,200 people. The report showed growth in many fields ​— ​particularly in government, trade, personal-care aides, and veterinary technicians ​— ​but some losses in construction, manufacturing, and hospitality. The cities of Lompoc, Guadalupe, and Santa Maria continue to suffer unemployment rates in the double digits.

"The second thing to remember is never to make a big deal over monthly changes in the household survey data from which these part-time statistics are drawn. As Dean Baker points out around this recent part-time dust up, “If Robert Samuelson had written this piece last month, before the release of the June data, he could have been decrying the disappearance of part-time work, since the economy had lost 318,000 part-time jobs in the prior two months.” According to White House economists, “In the recovery itself 88 percent of the jobs added have been full time, and that number is 99 percent in the last year.”"

"If those facts don’t fit your ideology, I’m sorry, but while you’ve certainly got a right to your own opinion, you don’t have a right to your own facts."

"Swings in the data aren’t unusual. Last month’s increase in part-timers followed a 196,000 slump in May. What’s more, there are about a quarter million fewer Americans working part time for economic reasons than at the end of 2013 and a million more with full-time jobs.

“Since late last year, there was a turn in labor market dynamics in favor of full-time employment,” said Millan Mulraine, deputy head of U.S. research and strategy at TD Securities USA LLC in New York. “The underlying message is, the labor market recovery is well and truly on its way.”"